TANTON 37: Lunacy’s Alter Ego

To give you a clearer idea of Lunacy‘s provenance I thought I’d share these pix of one of her sisterships, which is currently for sale up in Montreal. This design by Yves-Marie Tanton features Lunacy‘s hull form, but with a perfectly flush deck and a freestanding cat-ketch rig. You’ll also note that this version of the boat does not carry the two-foot scoop on the transom that makes Lunacy a 39-footer instead of a 37-footer.

My understanding is there are four other cat-ketch sisterships like this one, all built, like Lunacy, by Kingston Aluminum Yachts in Ontario during the 1980s. Lunacy is the only example with a conventional cutter rig. To get an idea of how the ketch-rigged boats sail, you can take a peek at this YouTube video.

In studying these images one interesting thing I noticed is that this boat carries a massive retractable aluminum bowsprit. You can see it stowed on deck here in this photo:

And here you see it deployed under sail in this poor low-res image:

This gives me a much clearer idea of where Yves-Marie was coming from when he proposed a similar sprit for Lunacy when I first embarked on the Nose Job project.

You’ll also note the very interesting over-sized cockpit dodger on this boat, which is supported by large fixed hoops. As you can see in this shot, those hoops seem to be aluminum pieces that are simply welded on to the cockpit coamings:

Here are some shots of the interior, which seems comfy enough, but not as neatly finished as Lunacy‘s:

Many thanks to my good friend and erstwhile shipmate Phil Cavanaugh for sending me images and the video link.